Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia
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- Publication date
- 2009-09-25
- Usage
- Public Domain


- Topics
- librivox, literature, audiobook, adventure, fiction, choice of life.
- Language
- English
- Item Size
- 967.2M
LibriVox recording of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, by Samuel Johnson. Read by Martin Geeson.
In this enchanting fable (subtitled The Choice of Life), Rasselas and his retinue burrow their way out of the totalitarian paradise of the Happy Valley in search of that triad of eighteenth-century aspiration - life, liberty and happiness. According to that quirky authority, James Boswell, Johnson penned his only work of prose fiction in a handful of days to cover the cost of his mother's funeral. The stylistic elegance of the book and its wide-ranging philosophical concerns give no hint of haste or superficiality.
Among other still burning issues Johnson's characters pursue questions of education, colonialism, the nature of the soul and even climate alteration. Johnson's profoundest concern, however, is with the alternating attractions of solitude and social participation, seen not only as the ultimate life-choice but as the arena in which are played out the deepest fears of the individual: "Of the uncertainties of our present state, the most dreadful and alarming is the uncertain continuance of Reason.”
(Summary by Martin Geeson)
For further information, including links to online text, reader information, RSS feeds, CD cover or other formats (if available), please go to the LibriVox catalog page for this recording.
For more free audio books or to become a volunteer reader, visit LibriVox.org.
M4B audio book (153mb)
In this enchanting fable (subtitled The Choice of Life), Rasselas and his retinue burrow their way out of the totalitarian paradise of the Happy Valley in search of that triad of eighteenth-century aspiration - life, liberty and happiness. According to that quirky authority, James Boswell, Johnson penned his only work of prose fiction in a handful of days to cover the cost of his mother's funeral. The stylistic elegance of the book and its wide-ranging philosophical concerns give no hint of haste or superficiality.
Among other still burning issues Johnson's characters pursue questions of education, colonialism, the nature of the soul and even climate alteration. Johnson's profoundest concern, however, is with the alternating attractions of solitude and social participation, seen not only as the ultimate life-choice but as the arena in which are played out the deepest fears of the individual: "Of the uncertainties of our present state, the most dreadful and alarming is the uncertain continuance of Reason.”
(Summary by Martin Geeson)
For further information, including links to online text, reader information, RSS feeds, CD cover or other formats (if available), please go to the LibriVox catalog page for this recording.
For more free audio books or to become a volunteer reader, visit LibriVox.org.
M4B audio book (153mb)
- Addeddate
- 2009-09-25 03:05:30
- Boxid
- OL100020414
- Call number
- 3549
- External-identifier
-
urn:storj:bucket:jvrrslrv7u4ubxymktudgzt3hnpq:rasselas_prince_abyssinia_0909_librivox
- External_metadata_update
- 2019-03-23T18:48:44Z
- Identifier
- rasselas_prince_abyssinia_0909_librivox
- Ocr
- tesseract 5.0.0-rc2-1-gf788
- Ocr_autonomous
- true
- Ocr_detected_lang
- en
- Ocr_detected_lang_conf
- 1.0000
- Ocr_detected_script
- Latin
- Ocr_detected_script_conf
- 1.0000
- Ocr_module_version
- 0.0.14
- Ocr_parameters
- -l eng+Latin
- Ppi
- 600
- Run time
- 5:30:43
- Source
- Librivox recording of a public-domain text
- Taped by
- LibriVox
- Year
- 2009
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